Carly Fiorina surging as Meg Whitman falls back

CAMPAIGN 2010 U.S. Senate Race

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

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SAN JOSE, CA - OCTOBER 25: U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) looks on during a news conference afte touring the Stion production facility on October 25, 2010 in San Jose, California. With one week to go before the election, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer continuesto campaign throughout the state of California in hopes of keeping her senate seat by defeating her republican challenger and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. less

SAN JOSE, CA - OCTOBER 25: U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) looks on during a news conference afte touring the Stion production facility on October 25, 2010 in San Jose, California. With one week to go before ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

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SAN JOSE, CA - OCTOBER 25: (L-R) U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (R) talks with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) while touring the Stion production facility on October 25, 2010 in San Jose, California. With one week to go before the election, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to campaign throughout the state of California in hopes of keeping her senate seat by defeating her republican challenger and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina. less

SAN JOSE, CA - OCTOBER 25: (L-R) U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) (R) talks with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) while touring the Stion production facility on October 25, 2010 in San Jose, California. With one ... more

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina talks on a cell phone to a prospective voter while visiting a phone bank at Republican headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 24, 2010. With just over a week before election day Fiorina is in a tight race in her attempt to unseat incumbent U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat less

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina talks on a cell phone to a prospective voter while visiting a phone bank at Republican headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., Sunday, Oct. 24, 2010. With just over a ... more

Photo: Rich Pedroncelli, AP

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Republican nominee for the United States Senate representing California, Carly Fiorina speaks to an audience at the former Mitsubishi dealership in San Bernardino, Calif., Monday, Oct. 18, 2010.

Republican nominee for the United States Senate representing California, Carly Fiorina speaks to an audience at the former Mitsubishi dealership in San Bernardino, Calif., Monday, Oct. 18, 2010.

Photo: Gabriel Luis Acosta, AP

Carly Fiorina surging as Meg Whitman falls back

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The Republican woman who has the best chance to win in California on Nov. 2 is not billionaire Meg Whitman, who has spent more than $140 million of her own money to make sure every living thing knows who she is. It's Carly Fiorina, another former Silicon Valley CEO with thinner pockets but a looser campaign style who has drawn incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer into a dead heat.

The two Republican candidates have not campaigned together, but when they have appeared at the same event, it has been Fiorina who gets the attention, pounding a shot of Tequila and letting loose a rolled-r trill at the Hispanic 100 Lifetime Achievement Award dinner in Newport Beach (Orange County) this month.

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Even as Fiorina piggybacks on Whitman's high-tech ground operation to mobilize voters, her campaign is betting that she won't be sucked down with Whitman should the former eBay CEO lose the race for governor to Democrat Jerry Brown.

"The notion that somehow their fates are inextricably tied like they're some political Thelma and Louise is absurd," said Fiorina campaign manager Marty Wilson.

A poll last week by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California showed Brown opening an eight-point lead over Whitman, up from a virtual tie in September. But Fiorina had edged to within five points of Boxer, with 13 percent of likely voters undecided. A Rasmussen poll Friday showed Fiorina closing to within three points, and leading by five among those who said they are certain to vote.

More Democrats

Democrats often run away with statewide races because they have 2.3 million more registered voters than do Republicans. But this year, there are also 2.3 million Californians out of work. The news just keeps getting worse, with another 63,600 workers losing their jobs last month.

For the GOP, the Boxer seat is as much a trophy as that of endangered Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in neighboring Nevada. As influential as Reid is, Fiorina is considered a more substantive contender than Reid's opponent, Tea Party-backed Sharron Angle, and Boxer's three-decade stint in Washington as a liberal crusader has made her a GOP target.

"Barbara Boxer has been on the Republican dartboard ever since landing in Washington," said Claremont McKenna College political scientist Jack Pitney. "One of the biggest surprises in California is that Brown's lead is larger than Boxer's, which means that Fiorina could win narrowly, even if Whitman loses narrowly."

Pitney said voters are drawing distinctions between Whitman and Fiorina, including the fact that "Fiorina hasn't had an illegal alien problem," referring to Whitman's employment of an illegal housekeeper for nine years, whom she fired after the Mexican maid confessed that she lacked papers.

White House help

The White House is pouring everything it has into the Boxer campaign, sending President Obama to a private Palo Alto fundraiser last Thursday and a huge Los Angeles rally for Boxer on Friday. Following on her husband's heels, first lady Michelle Obama is scheduled to be in California for Boxer today and Wednesday with the aim of shoring up Boxer's base among women and African Americans.

Public Policy Institute President and CEO Mark Baldassare said voters are deeply unhappy with both Sacramento and Washington, but draw a distinction between the two very different jobs of governor and senator.

"You've got a Boxer-Fiorina race that revolves around how people are feeling about Congress, and you don't have that same dynamic in the Whitman-Brown race," Baldassare said. Aside from partisans, he said, "Independents are really the interesting issue. What do they want in Sacramento? And what do they want in Washington?"

This promises to be the toughest race in Boxer's career, perhaps closer than her first Senate race in 1992 against Republican Bruce Herschensohn, when Boxer is widely believed to have been helped by Democratic operative Bob Mulholland's revelation four days before the election that Herschensohn had visited a strip bar.

Nothing for granted

"It's close, as we always thought it was going to be," said Boxer campaign aide Matthew Kagan. "We're not taking any votes for granted, we're not writing off any groups, we're going after every vote."

A national GOP strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a deluge of political ads in California might have reached such saturation that "voters are evaluating each of the individual candidates on their own." Republicans think Brown, despite his long political resume going back to the governorship in 1975, has effectively come off as an outsider, but Boxer has deliberately run as a Washington insider, defending the unpopular stimulus and campaigning with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

But in a state where Obama is still popular, that could work, Baldassare said.

"The highest approval that we're seeing when we ask about the governor, the Legislature, the Congress, is of the president," he said. "What people think about Congress and what people think about the president are two different things."

Fiorina, by contrast, must overcome hostility to the GOP among California's independent voters, two-thirds of whom told pollsters they don't like Republicans.

"That's a challenge for Fiorina," Baldassare said.

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